hthrrloooo

Making this favorite soup for dinner to celebrate being finished with the reading. This is delicious as-is, but what makes it downright sublime are all the accoutrements you can add to your bowl: finely shredded cabbage, shaved radishes, pickled red onion, cilantro, lime, queso fresco, sour cream, avocado, and crumbled tortilla chips.

It's even better the next day.

I never tell my team to hurry in any way; in fact, I always tell them to go steadily and take their time. We're paid by the hour and not by number of essays scored. If our employer wants to finish the job on time, they should adequately staff the reading.

Last night I dreamed about a house where I'd prepared and decorated my space in ways I felt proud to share. In that dream, I met a woman who had adorned her own space with glamour shots of herself as a clown (her profession).

I also dreamed that I had martinis and words with my ex. Later, my dead father showed up on my back patio garden, which was in a state of disarray and needed organizing and planting. I felt ashamed of being caught unprepared for growing season. He was incapable of speech, only plaintive noises. He was wearing one of the starched, dry-cleaned white dress shirts he always wore to the office, tucked into inexplicable green pants. I hugged him and found I had to support him—he was as uncoordinated and lumbering, but also as vulnerable and childlike as Frankenstein's creature when he first woke.

I feel like the goo inside a chrysalis today.

His version, with white cheddar, caramelized kimchi, chives, and toasted sesame oil, is very delicious. But mostly these days, I just use his technique to make baked potatoes in the style of a local chain called Petro's that sells a frito pie that I've been eating since I was a middle schooler in the mid-'80s and it was a joint in the food court of our mall (R.I.P., they razed it and built an Amazon fulfillment center on top of its bones).

Basically, it's a bowl of Frito's (or a baked potato) topped with turkey chili, cheese, diced tomatoes, green onions, black olives, sour cream, and pickled jalapenos. It's heaven.